Ventura County Budget Battle Heading for Court

It looks like the fight over public safety funding in Ventura County is finally going to the mat.

Or at least to a courtroom.

The county sheriff and district attorney filed suit last week to pin down the amount of money that the Board of Supervisors should give them each year. Supervisors say they will respond with a suit of their own this week.

Court rulings are expected to provide answers to several long-debated questions at the county’s Hall of Administration: Can supervisors change a local public safety funding ordinance by a simple majority vote? Or do they have to take proposed changes to a public ballot?

Was the ordinance legal to begin with?

At issue is the amount of annual funding allotted to Sheriff Bob Brooks and Dist. Atty. Greg Totten to run their departments.

A 1995 ordinance adopted by a 3-2 vote of supervisors requires the county to funnel as much as $50 million annually in proceeds from a special half-cent sales tax to four public safety departments, including the sheriff’s and district attorney’s. On top of that, the public safety agencies receive millions more from the county’s general fund to cover inflationary costs.

However, when public safety spending grew twice as fast as the county’s revenue, a new board majority voted two years ago to cap the inflationary increases at the consumer price index, about 3.75%.

A cap was necessary, supervisors said, because public safety funding was growing so fast it was threatening to bankrupt the county.

But Brooks and Totten say that the decision violates the original ordinance and has created big budget problems for them. Their lawsuit seeks to restore the funding formula and to award their departments another $50 million they allege was illegally diverted from them.

Brooks last month closed the women’s Honor Farm near Ojai and is threatening to close the East County Jail to deal with a loss of $10 million in funding.

Totten says he has had to leave prosecutors and investigators’ positions vacant due to a $2.8-million reduction.

Although their funding growth is lower than in previous years, both men will receive budget increases of 3.75% this year, while many other county departments will receive flat funding or budget cuts.

It appears that supervisors are now ready to take the standoff a step further and ask the courts to invalidate the entire ordinance. The board will consider filing the lawsuit on Tuesday in a closed-door session.

A majority, Steve Bennett, John Flynn and Kathy Long, said they supported the idea of a countersuit. Supervisor Linda Parks said she wanted to “hear more about it” before deciding. Board Chairwoman Judy Mikels could not be reached.

County Counsel Frank Sieh said the ordinance is not legal because it violates the state’s Budget Act. That law gives ultimate budget authority to the Board of Supervisors, Sieh said.

That authority cannot be changed by any local ordinance, he said. Brooks dismissed that contention, saying other counties have successfully adopted financing laws. “We believe we are on firm legal ground,” he said.

Bennett said the budget crisis in Sacramento would almost certainly trickle down to harm the county’s local finances. So it was time, he said, to finally put to rest the question of who controls the county’s budget.

“The sheriff is concerned only with his department,” Bennett said. “The Board of Supervisors is concerned with the whole county. It’s important for the board to be able to exercise that budgetary function.”

Flynn said he was dismayed by the sheriff’s decision to pursue a legal fight even though the county was facing a dire financial future. “The problem is that the sheriff and the district attorney have not shown one ounce of sensitivity to the issues,” Flynn said. “To listen to them, you would think that California is doing quite well, that the governor is not facing a recall and that the state has a surplus. They are not facing reality.”